I've had a lot of land surveyors lately who have ask me about the best tools to use for editing videos before uploading them to the network. Uploading surveying videos from the field does not have to be a daunting task, as the most important and challenging aspect of putting a video together is making sure that the video captures everything that you hope to convey to the other members who hope to learn something from your video. So in this post I am going to help you find and learn more about the various tools that you can use for creating truly phenomenal videos for sharing on Land Surveyors United and around the web.

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Storytelling With Video

Storytelling. Videos are the preferred canvas for the digital storytellers of today. And when you post storiesto the network, embedding a video along side of your written story is the best way to get your point across. Videos as opposed to any other medium, blunts the imagination and gives it to you direct. A picture postcard can convey just so much about your latest vacation. Put your joy on a video and give your family and friends a more immersive experience. The good news is that to create a video, you just need a camera. And you probably have it on the smartphone you are carrying. The actual video creation tools – the video editors – are within reach of an URL.

Video editing online has helped to turn everyone into armchair filmmakers. Most online video editors give you the basic cutting, splicing, and merging tools. Then there are the ubiquitous sharing options.

What else do you need to turn your latest vacation, or even your Sunday cooking into a video that others can enjoy? Maybe, just a read through these five free tools for online video editing.

YouTube Video Editor

You will most probably knock on YouTube’s door when it comes to hosting your video clips. So, why not make use of YouTube’s very own Video Editor.

Features you can use:

• Combine multiple videos you’ve uploaded to create a new longer video
• Trim your uploads to custom lengths
• Add a soundtrack from YouTube’s library of approved tracks (browse by genre and artist).
• Enhance clips with special tools and effects (add text, tweak brightness and contrast, ass transitions, and stabilize to reduce camera shake etc.).
• Use the Blurring tool in sensitive videos to protect privacy.

YouTube also has the largest collection of Creative Commons videos. You can choose from 4 million videos and add them to your projects.

Video Tool Box

The free online video editing application comes with an advanced file manager that helps you to upload and download video files from other sites on the Web.

Features you can use:

• You can upload videos up to 600 MB. You can also directly record streams from your webcam or another videocast device.
• You can download videos from more than 20 video-sharing websites.
  You can add your own watermarks to the videos.
• Crop, merge, demux, and hardcode subtitles to your videos.
• Gives you two modes to work with – simple and advanced. It is a video converter too as it can convert between all of the popular video formats (3GP, AMV, ASF, AVI, FLV, MKV, MOV, M4V, MP4, MPEG, MPG, RM, VOB, WMV).

Pixorial

Pixorial brings collaborative video editing to the cloud. The online video tool has a free Basic plan, and a bouquet of Premium plans. Sign-up with Google or Facebook.

Features you can use:

• The Pixorial Movie Creator gives you 1 GB of online space to upload, create, and collaborate on videos. You can also connect to Google Drive (and its 5 GB storage) and sync your videos.
• The Movie Creator brings advanced editing that allows you to trim videos, combine clips from different videos, add music, and create text, titles and credits.
• The Desktop Uploader helps you upload all your videos to the cloud. Alternatively, you can use the Webcam recorder to capture videos from the webcam.
• Pixorial also offers 500 royalty free music tracks for use.
• Pixorial has apps for iPhone and Android that make it easier to capture, upload and share your videos.

WeVideo

WeVideo is another collaborative online video editing tool. It again comes in a mix of free and premium plans. For instance, the free account allows you to collaborate with a maximum of 5 people. Let’s talk a bit more about the free account.

Features you can use:

• WeVideo give you 1 GB of online storage.
• WeVideo supports most video formats.
• Videos are limited to 360p resolution. Also, the free account restricts exports to 15 minutes worth of playtime per month. You can export to Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and Twitter.
• You can also connect WeVideo to Google Drive and sync your videos across the cloud.
• The editing interface is full featured with effects, animations, transitions, and color correction filters. You can also use 390 music loops in your videos. WeVideo supports multi-track audio.

FileLab Video Editor

FileLab looks like one of the newer kids on the block, and it offers a very easy interface to impress us. It is one-third of the FileLab trinity that also includes an audio editor and a Windows Cleaner. To launch the video editor, you will need to install the FileLab plug-in which is a 1 MB download.

Features you can use:

• Trim, cut, split, merge, rotate and mix videos.
• Go creative with two dozen video effects, such as Old Movie, TV Simulation and Pencil Sketch. You can add multiple effects to different parts of a video. Also, embellish with animated text and music.
• FileLab gives you a gallery of transition effects and timeline to fine tune the video playback by adding different transitions.
• Add video overlays to your movie and set their transparency, position and direction.
  HD video format is supported. You can also export the video to be playable in Android, iPhone and iPad.

Go out and create a video for your company or as a creative resume that highlights your surveying skills!  When you look back a few years, a lot many of the free online video editors that were available then have fallen by the wayside. Some new ones have come up, but none of them will be putting the desktop video tools out of business soon. But even then – online video editors have a few advantages other than their here-there-and everywhere presence. You don’t need to worry about codecs. Then, as we have seen with most of the examples above, they offer online storage plus sync and sharing options with services like Google Drive, YouTube, and Facebook. Also, being browser based, they are far lighter on system resources. Yes, they have their limitations too – from restricted video lengths to the problem of uploading fat video files via a slow connection.

If you are needs have more to do with social sharing and creating small video clips, online video editors could be the thing. Which is your preferred one? Is there any online video editor that should have been on this list?